It’s not about the reach (as CM tips 1.3M UBs monthly)

18 Nov It’s not about the reach (as CM tips 1.3M UBs monthly)

When I think about being an online publisher of two sites which reach distinct and attractive audiences, I sometimes like to borrow the phraseology from Lance Armstrong’s biography.

Lance Armstrong’s biography, while now deemed a crafted work of fiction, had a wonderful title: ‘It’s not about the bike’. The title says, in a powerful way, that success was all about the person who powered the bike. The bike was a necessary pre-requisite but didn’t create the success. Armstrong did.

For him, it wasn’t about the bike. For us: It’s not about the reach.

Now don’t get me wrong – we see audience size as the number one leading indicator of our business. It’s what we look at every day.

We are myopically focused on audience growth. And we’ve seen stunning numbers.

According to Google Analytics, over the past rolling month The Roar has reached 678,582 unique visitors and 2,102,230 page views. Lost At E Minor had 655,502 unique visitors and 1,605,702 page views. So combined the sites were visited by 1.3 million people (or thereabouts). That’s an increase of 30% within the last 6 months.

The audience growth says we’re doing a lot right.

“It’s about understanding [your] audience and offering advertisers the opportunity to target them in the right place at the right time. The notion of large audiences equating to more dollars is less and less relevant.”GroupM chief digital officer Danny Bass, on Adnews.

But consider the quote above by GroupM’s chief digital officer. His point is that in the age of demand side platforms and low cpm (and often, low quality) media buys, what really matters is a publisher’s ability to activate their audiences for advertisers at the right time, in the right context.

And this is exactly how we go about selling our media.

Yes, you need the bike reach. But what it’s about really is a publisher’s ability to activate this audience to meet a campaign’s objectives.